[SPECTATOR.ORG] The latest budget battle in Washington has Democrats and Republicans once again at loggerheads. Democrats think Republicans should get nothing in return for another debt ceiling increase. Republicans think they should get less than nothing.
The House GOP leadership has longed to stop the gory budget showdowns of the past few years. That means giving up on further cuts and passing a clean debt ceiling increase; a cringeworthy proposal, but one that should have attained enough Democrat and establishment Republican support to pass the House. Instead, the GOP found a creative way to make it worse. Republicans attached a provision to the debt ceiling increase that would cancel $6 billion worth of savings from military pension reforms in the Ryan-Murray budget. This would be offset by an extension of sequestration on Medicare spending 10 years from now.
Senate Democrats initially balked, and introduced another bill that would have stricken the pension reforms without any offsets whatsoever. But as another snowstorm bore down on Washington, the Senate caved yesterday and approved the original House legislation.
Politics watchers cheered. "This is how Washington works," wrote Molly Ball at the Atlantic. Washington working apparently means Democrats refusing to compromise, Republicans compromising and throwing in additional needless concessions, Democrats demanding further concessions on the needless concessions, and Democrats finally agreeing to the first round of concessions so they can leave the office before Washington gets hit by the sort of snowstorm that makes New Englanders briefly contemplate switching to four-wheel drive. This must be what centrists mean when they talk about "making tough decisions for our children." |